{"id":825,"date":"2023-02-27T19:45:14","date_gmt":"2023-02-27T20:45:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=825"},"modified":"2023-02-27T20:57:54","modified_gmt":"2023-02-27T20:57:54","slug":"op-ed-as-trump-attacks-desantis-touts-courage-to-buck-lockdowners-in-new-book","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=825","title":{"rendered":"Op-Ed: As Trump Attacks, DeSantis Touts \u2018Courage\u2019 to Buck Lockdowners\u2019 in New Book"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post originally appeared at https:\/\/www.wisconsinrightnow.com\/the-courage-to-be-free\/<\/a><\/p>\n

\"the<\/p>\n

Ron DeSantis\u2019s new book, The Courage to Be Free: Florida\u2019s Blueprint for America\u2019s Revival, is set to be released on February 28th. You can buy it here<\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

When schools, stadiums, and churches were locked and empty, hundreds of thousands of Americans poured into the streets to protest the police killing of George Floyd in the summer of 2020, setting up an uncomfortable conflict between public health and social justice during the early days of the pandemic in America.<\/p>\n

More than a thousand experts and activists, including many from academia, weighed in. Yes, they wrote in an open letter that quickly went viral, social distancing remained an \u201ceffective\u201d method to slow the spread, but \u201cwhite supremacy is a lethal public health issue that predates and contributes to COVID-19.\u201d<\/p>\n

These same voices added, however, that their support of Black Lives Matter demonstrations \u201cshould not be confused with a permissive stance on all gatherings, particularly protests against stay-home orders.\u201d Those kinds of protests, they insisted, were \u201crooted in white nationalism.\u201d<\/p>\n

This was the moment when DeSantis<\/a> lost faith, if he had any left, in the experts, i.e., the ruling class of public health professionals who governed the U.S. response to COVID-19. What Florida\u2019s Republican governor saw as an obvious double standard \u201ctold me all I needed to know about what partisans these people were.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those kinds of \u201cexperts,\u201d DeSantis concluded, \u201cwere not going to save us\u201d \u2013 a populist theme that defines his forthcoming memoir, \u201cThe Courage to Be Free,\u201d set to be published Tuesday and segments of which were obtained early by RealClearPolitics.<\/p>\n

DeSantis writes that Florida became \u201ca citadel of freedom\u201d during the pandemic by \u201ccutting against the grain of elite and media opinion\u201d and \u201cbucking the experts,\u201d including those who led the COVID task force in the Trump White House. As he explores his own bid for the presidency, a contest that would necessarily pit him against the former president, the book brings that implicit contrast into sharp relief.<\/p>\n

Though he loves to loathe them now, Trump never told Anthony Fauci or any of the other lockdown architects he employed \u201cYou\u2019re fired!\u201d But DeSantis, without criticizing Trump specifically, writes how he \u201cconsumed data\u201d and \u201cmeasured it against policies implemented\u201d in other states before deciding early on \u201cthat I would not blindly follow Fauci and other elite experts.\u201d<\/p>\n

That difference could be a deciding factor in the 2024 Republican primary season if the two men find themselves crossways on a debate stage. Trump has already been blasted on COVID from the left. A rebuke has not yet materialized on the right. And DeSantis does not offer an explicit one in \u201cThe Courage to Be Free\u201d so much as he rails against the media, whom he excoriates for holding up \u201cgovernors like Andrew Cuomo as heroes,\u201d and while treating the pronouncements of self-confident experts as gospel.<\/p>\n

For DeSantis, Fauci is an obvious foil. He recalls how the public face of the pandemic response advised states like Florida in July of 2020 that they \u201cshould seriously look at shutting down.\u201d The reason, according to the now retired director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, was that \u201cwe are seeing exponential growth.\u201d Democrats in the Florida legislature echoed that warning and called for a state-wide mask mandate in a public letter that was read on loop on cable news.<\/p>\n

DeSantis did not listen. This isn\u2019t because of what his critics called \u201cneanderthal thinking,\u201d he says in his memoir. It\u2019s because he was convinced that \u201cFauci and the House Democrats were not in tune with the data.\u201d He recalls that emergency room visits had already peaked by the time of Fauci\u2019s warning. What\u2019s more, the numbers the federal COVID task force was relying on were out of date, at least in Florida, as documented infections could take as long as 10 days to be reported. Their prescription amounted to \u201ca post-peak shutdown,\u201d DeSantis writes, \u201cwhich would have been totally counterproductive and hurt Floridians.\u201d<\/p>\n

And while other states sought to \u201cshut down the virus,\u201d Florida shifted strategy and adopted a more focused approach. He writes of that recent history that the goal was to preserve hospital capacity for the worst-case scenarios, \u201cnot to achieve zero COVID,\u201d a lofty aspiration that he says \u2013 and medical professionals now concede \u2013 \u201cwas impossible.\u201d In this way, the governor writes that Florida looked more like \u201clockdown-free Sweden.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some readers may not have the appetite for retrospective debates about epidemiology, but conservative voters are still frosted about what they see as unfair treatment. DeSantis delivers a heavy dose of media criticism, criticizing \u201clegacy media outlets\u201d for politicizing a once-in-a-century global pandemic and using \u201cit as a cudgel against their political opponents.\u201d<\/p>\n

DeSantis writes with a sense of vindication, especially when comparing and contrasting his state with others. The subtext that may become increasingly apparent if he seeks the presidency: During the pandemic there was another way, a better way, than the trail blazed by Fauci and the feds \u2013 and Democrats all over the country.<\/p>\n

The governor writes that while New York under former Cuomo and California under his nemesis Gov. Gavin Newsom locked down for longer, Florida did the opposite \u2013 with better results. Between April of 2020 and July of 2022 in Florida, DeSantis writes, excess mortality, the rubric for measuring the increase in deaths in contrast to a pre-pandemic baseline, \u201crose by 15.6% \u2013 a smaller increase than in lockdown-happy states that typically received media praise.\u201d New York and California fared worse with excess mortality rates of 20% and 17.7% respectively, and even then, without the additional inherent challenge that Florida faced, namely \u201cone of the most elderly and vulnerable populations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Opponents heaped criticism on DeSantis at the time for refusing to permanently lock down; one liberal activist drew national headlines for dressing up like the Grim Reaper and patrolling Florida beaches in protest. Voters rewarded DeSantis with a rout at the polls; he won reelection last year by double digits, voters said, because he kept the state open and returned kids to school earlier than other states.<\/p>\n

One main reason, according to DeSantis? He listened to the other doctors, the epidemiologists and medical experts who had credentials as good or better than those directing the White House COVID task force, though they never graced the covers of magazines or had artisanal cocktails named in their honor while deaths of despair skyrocketed around the country. The Florida approach, DeSantis writes, was in line with what the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration later recommended.<\/p>\n

As those scientists pointed out, the risk of mortality during COVID was highest among the elderly, and their declaration on the economic and social harms caused by the lockdowns was published in October of 2020. Their opinions were well known though not widely adopted outside of some states like Florida, something DeSantis considers malpractice. \u201cThis fact should have played a major role in shaping the proper COVID-19 response,\u201d DeSantis writes, \u201cbut most public health experts rejected a strategy focusing on minimizing risks to the elderly while avoiding the harms associated with shutting down society and imposing restrictions on low-risk people.\u201d<\/p>\n

As frequently as he questions the experts who were in vogue during the pandemic, DeSantis highlights a trust in the individual to \u201cmake the best decisions for themselves and their families.\u201d His job, as he recalls, was to find \u201cevidence-based\u201d approaches \u201cthat recognized the obvious harms of mitigation efforts, and that best maintained the normal social functioning of our communities.\u201d<\/p>\n

Face coverings are one prominent example. If masks were as effective as advertised, he writes, \u201cthen people would choose to wear them without government coercion.\u201d Shutdown orders are another. \u201cJust as I refused to impose a shutdown,\u201d he adds, \u201cI rejected imposing a mask mandate.\u201d Trump has since challenged him on that timeline.<\/p>\n

The former president is running a third time for the White House and now argues that the governor is \u201ctrying to rewrite history.\u201d Trump told reporters last month that there were \u201cRepublican governors that did not close their states\u201d before adding that \u201cFlorida was closed for a long period of time.\u201d<\/p>\n

DeSantis does not take that Trump criticism head on. He does address it, though. \u201cBecause the media and liberal politicians vehemently criticized Florida for being open, people sometimes forget that, early in the pandemic, Florida did four weeks of so-called essential business,\u201d he writes. This, he notes, was in accordance with \u201cthe template provided by the federal government.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Florida definition of essential business was purposefully left so broad \u201cthat it included everything from construction to WWE wrestling.\u201d He did issue a brief stay-at-home order in April of 2020, making Florida one of the last densely populated states to do so. Critics slammed him for waiting.<\/p>\n

Controversies over lockdowns and mask requirements have since given way to arguments over the vaccine as the pandemic turns endemic. The debate over \u201cthe jab\u201d could be potent in what some have already called \u201cthe vaccine election.\u201d The DeSantis argument is simple: He got the shots quickly for those who wanted them. He never forced anyone to get vaccinated.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile I rejected mandates to require any Floridian to take the vaccine, at the time my hope was that the shots would produce sterilizing immunity such that those who took it would not get coronavirus,\u201d DeSantis said, explaining his thinking. \u201cThis, of course, did not happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to the governor, the mRNA vaccines subsequently became \u201ca flashpoint\u201d in what he describes as \u201cthe battle against the biomedical security state.\u201d<\/p>\n

The \u201clockdowners,\u201d he says, switched to demanding vaccine requirements \u201ceven as evidence piled up that the shots were not living up to expectations\u201d and in a deliberate effort \u201cto marginalize those who declined the shot.\u201d<\/p>\n

The simple through-line of the DeSantis book: He rejected mandates when others did not. He leaves readers to make their own comparisons, perhaps until he decides to run for president himself.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy the end of the summer of 2020, I could tell that more and more Floridians were thankful that I had been willing to take the fire to keep the state open and keep our citizens free,\u201d he writes. \u201cAfter reviewing the data, I made the judgment that draconian measures would do major damage to the economy and society while making little to no impact on the trajectory of the disease.\u201d<\/p>\n

In this way, DeSantis explains, Florida became \u201cthe citadel of freedom in the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n

This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.<\/em><\/p>\n

Philip Wegmann | RealClearWire
\nGo to Source<\/a>
\nReposted with permission<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post originally appeared at https:\/\/www.wisconsinrightnow.com\/the-courage-to-be-free\/ Ron DeSantis\u2019s new book, The Courage to Be Free:…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":827,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-825","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wi-right-now"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/825","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=825"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/825\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":828,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/825\/revisions\/828"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/827"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}